Hi,
So errr yeah, my cd burner (Philips CD-RW 804) went loopy this morning.
Out of the blue, it started making weird sounds, then lens would travel back and forth, with the LED blinking red/green... That managed to make my comp freeze before I could shut it down.
After a (hard) reboot, it was not detected during the POST. The IDE drives look-up took ages in itself since the burner wouldn't stop its mumbo jumbo... Then freeze during WinXP loading sequence.
Another (hard) reboot, I try to keep the tray open to... kinda... get its attention away... and here goes the tray going back and forth.

There was no cd in the drive, I wasn't using it at all.
That just happened...

It was set as slave on the same IDE channel as the DVD drive. The DVD drive supported UDMA while the burner didn't.

The burner was 2-years old. I had maybe burnt 40 CDs with it in all.

Ok, I don't really know if it's completely dead. Unfortunately, the shop where I expected to test it is closed for holidays.

Has any of you ever gone through that kind of mess?
What do you think it's due to? UDMA/PIO on same IDE channel? Age? Unreliable manufacturer? Cable shortcut?